Circle of Ashes (Wish Quartet Book 2), Page 3

  Jo pulled away and assessed the man with the sunshine smile. He’d been born during the Renaissance, was old enough to have seen dozens of wars, immeasurable horrors, and he could still smile as genuinely as he did. She didn’t know if it was admirable or terrifying. In what way did a heart have to contort to be able to do that?

  “Will do.” Jo dismissed him and her thoughts before they could linger in a place that was far too negative. This team was all she had; she couldn’t allow suspicions to form surrounding someone’s goodness. It was just the shock and hurt talking, she knew.

  She turned right, heading up the stairs toward the recreation rooms. There was no sign of Snow in the hallway, even if she squinted all the way to the very end. Jo wasn’t sure if his absence was relieving or disappointing. It was likely for the best, either way. She was emotionally off-balance, somewhat upset with the man’s actions (even if she didn’t really have any right to be), and not in the best headspace to exchange words.

  Much to her surprise, and despite Takako’s much earlier comments about what she did when she needed to “clear her head,” both recreation rooms were void of watches—no sign of Takako at either.

  That left one other option.

  Jo headed in the opposite direction, back toward the Four-Way, up the other set of stairs, and toward her own room. However, instead of turning left at the end of the hall, she turned right and was faced with the nameplate that greeted her every morning: Takako. Taking a deep breath, Jo gave a gentle knock on the door.

  Several seconds passed and wore at her resolve. There was no word, no response. She should leave the woman be.

  But something wouldn’t let her.

  “Takako,” Jo said softly, knocking again. “I know you’re in there.” She didn’t, actually. But she couldn’t imagine where else her friend would be. They didn’t have that many options for privacy in the Society. “Please, open the door?”

  Just as Jo had committed herself to sitting on the floor and waiting in the hall until Takako was ready to let someone in, the door finally cracked open. Takako stood rigid, half her body still hidden on the other side.

  “Yes?”

  “May I come in?” Jo asked, wishing it sounded stronger. She wasn’t going to take no for an answer, yet wanted to let it be Takako’s choice.

  “Why?” The woman questioning her was nothing like the Takako Jo knew. She’d burrowed deep into this shell of curt responses. Not that Jo could blame her.

  “Because I don’t think you should be alone.” Being honest came easier than she expected it to, and it seemed to startle the woman. Seeing her hesitation, Jo doubled down. “We don’t have to talk. I can just, be there. . .”

  As if merely being there could ever be enough, she mentally chided herself. But to her surprise, Takako stepped back and allowed the door to swing open wide enough for Jo to enter. She stepped in quickly.

  She’d seen rooms like this in pamphlets for Japanese resorts, nice hotels, even in one of her former employer’s homes. It was an open space, with ten woven grass mats making up the floor. Wooden beams supported cream-colored, sand-paper-textured walls on three sides. The fourth side had shoji—wood and paper—screens pulled open to a wooden platform that overlooked a small garden space. A pastel sunset glowed behind purple mountains.

  It was the epitome of Japanese architecture. Yuusuke would’ve been proud of Jo for just how much of her Japanese she could recall without the use of magic: a horigotatsu in the center of the room, a tokonoma with a scroll displaying calligraphy, an oversized closet where Jo fully expected to find futon tucked away. Yet, as picture-perfect as it all was, it still felt lived in. There were little accents here and there displayed above the rest, placing personalization before the picturesque, and making it feel like a home.

  Takako busied herself at an electric kettle. Her movements were measured and precise as she filled up two small cups and put them on a tray with Japanese rice crackers between them. Jo left her to it, stepping onto the wooden platform just beyond the shoji and taking a seat.

  There was a crash and an expletive from behind her that had Jo turning.

  “Are you—”

  “I’m fine,” Takako snapped. “I just. . . I’m fine.” she said much softer, in that same barely-controlled way as she cleaned up the mess of tea that had just spilled across her small counter. Jo knew it was much the opposite, but said nothing as Takako lifted the tray, setting it between them. “The tea isn’t much.”

  “Mugicha makes me think of home.”

  “Of home?” Takako said, startled. “I would’ve never imagined we would share a similarity on this.”

  “Why not?” Jo couldn’t help but laugh at her ever-mechanical nature.

  “Because you’re from America.”

  “Lone Star Republic, technically,” Jo gently corrected. She didn’t have enough nationalistic pride to take offense. Especially since Takako had never actually lived in a time where the LSR existed.

  “Right. . .” Takako shifted her cup from hand to hand. “Still can’t imagine there’s a big drive for mugicha in Texas.”

  “Well, yeah, fair. . . but plenty of people emigrate from East Japan.” Jo looked down at the tray, selecting the cup closest to her. She wished she hadn’t brought up the discussion of home, but it was far better for her to distract Takako with her own home than let the Japanese woman think of hers. So, Jo rambled away. “My friend, Yuusuke. You remember him I’m sure with the whole first wish debacle?” Jo cringed slightly. “His father immigrated to the Lone Star Republic for work from the California prefecture. That’s how we met in high school.”

  “East Japan. . . ” Takako said slowly, as if hearing it for the first time.

  “Well, yeah. . .” Jo thought back, she didn’t have to go very far. World War III hadn’t ended all that long ago. And it wasn’t like the details were very important. “I mean, technically, I think it’s all ‘Japan,’ but everyone calls the annexation of what was California, Washington, Oregon, and Nevada ‘East Japan.’” Jo took a long sip of tea. It was nostalgia in a cup. She and Yuusuke had let go of it long ago in favor of things with enough caffeine to kill a small animal. But it was the same rich, earthy taste she remembered from when they’d first become friends.

  Despite herself, she wondered how he was doing now, what he was doing now. She shouldn’t still care, but she hoped he was safe. And perhaps it was that hope against hope that had Jo sitting where she was now, understanding all too well what Takako was feeling—worry for people she should’ve let go long ago.

  Takako was silent, a frown passing over her face.

  Jo shifted to face the woman. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought up Japan.” How stupid could she really be?

  “It’s not that.” Takako shook her head.

  “Then. . .” Jo let the word trail off into an open-ended question. She wasn’t sure if it was safe to ask anything. There were memories they all had of their past lives that were better left forgotten.

  The other woman took a deep, slow breath—in through the nose and out through the mouth, as if bracing. “My wish.”

  “Your wish? What does your wish have to do with anything?” Jo brought up a hand to her mouth, having startled herself. Here she was, having just scolded herself for prodding Takako, and now she’d asked the one probing question the Society considered taboo. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

  “It’s fine.” Takako shook her head. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, to seek your forgiveness.”

  “Forgiveness for what?” Jo had come to console her, and now Takako was trying to turn the tide. But Jo wasn’t going to allow it. Or at least, she thought she wasn’t, but her mind went a bit blank the moment Takako opened her mouth again.

  “I destroyed your country.”

  Chapter 6

  Takako’s Wish

  “YOU. . . WHAT?”

  FOR a long moment, Takako didn’t elaborate. She simply reached for her own cup of tea and stared deep i
nto the depths of it, face lined with too many conflicted emotions for Jo to count. Then, as if finally finding her resolve, she set it back down with a heavy thud.

  “I admit, when you joined the Society and I realized you were American—or, from what had been America at least, I felt. . . a bit guilty,” Takako explained, not that it made her previous confession any less nonsensical. “I guess you could say I took your country away from you. I destroyed what could have been, so to speak.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jo tried to smile, but it felt a bit disjointed, her confusion overwhelming her features. Took away her country? How? She’d lived in it for nineteen years.

  Whether in attempts to explain, or simply to get the words out, Takako ignored her question for a moment, shaking her head. “I must have seemed standoffish at first, and for that I apologize, but I simply didn’t know what to say, not knowing what I know. But I still wanted you to feel welcome. And, I suppose, I wanted to make it up to you somehow. Everyone else was so much better at it than I. . . But I guess they’ve had more practice.”

  The gifts, the kindness. That had been Takako’s attempt at assuaging guilt?

  Jo frowned, looking from Takako’s face to her own cup. Despite the comfortably warm feel of the ceramic beneath her fingers, the tea still steamed, as if the cup should be much hotter to her touch. Jo wondered if it should be burning her, if it actually was, and the day had merely numbed all senses.

  “I don’t. . .” Jo shook her head, confused. She wanted to understand what Takako was saying, but she didn’t know how to ask for clarification. She didn’t doubt the genuineness of Takako’s kindness, regardless of the underlying intention, but her reasoning still felt beyond Jo’s reach. Her country had been just fine, hadn’t it? The Lone Star Republic continued on throught Jo’s short lifetime as it had always done. Not that she paid much attention to politics beyond her connections with the nation’s dark underbelly. What wish could Takako possibly have made?

  Jo’s frustration must have become obvious, because eventually, Takako sighed, raking her hands through her hair and tugging on it.

  “In 2010, our countries were at war,” she began, and when Jo met her gaze, there was a despondency there that she was unfamiliar with when it came to the kind, but stoic, woman.

  Jo remembered reading about World War III. History wasn’t exactly her favorite subject, but the war had only ended in 2015, just forty-two years before Jo joined the Society (a narrow enough piece of time that the veterans never let anyone forget), so it was hard not to know about the war. A rising tide of nationalism had pulled the former United States in on itself, retreating from its allies and making stronger enemies of old nemeses that ultimately formed the “Commonwealth Powers.”

  “The war started in 2007, right?” Jo asked, more for her own confirmation, whilst trying to remember exactly when Takako said she’d been born.

  Takako nodded. “It did. Japan was emboldened when the U.S. lent its support toward militarization—the de facto ‘Warden of the East.’ It was a potent blend with the determined drive forward on building the nation as a military power.”

  “And then there was the China-Japan war.”

  “In which, the use of Japanese force had the U.S.A. positioning itself against my country, and Japan siding with Russia.” The way she spoke was clinical, void of emotion or any real investment. Takako spoke like she was the one reading a textbook, espousing facts and nothing more. Until her voice began to waver. “I. . . I was a soldier, and I was afraid.” Her hand balled into a fist; Takako hung her head.

  Suddenly, the woman’s skill with a gun made a lot more sense. Jo reached out, taking her hand, and startling Takako into meeting her gaze. “That’s okay. I can’t imagine how terrifying it was. . .” She had never seen war. When Jo had grown up, the world was at peace. Well, minus the odd squabbles in North America’s Midwest, where no one could seem to decide what was a territory of what, who ruled themselves, and which regions were allied.

  “You don’t understand. I thought—that is to say, there were rumors. . . That the U.S. would unleash biological warfare.”

  Jo didn’t remember reading anything about that, one way or another. So she kept her mouth shut and just listened.

  “That was when I made my wish.”

  In the silence that followed the barely-there confession, Jo found herself mulling over Takako’s words. It had been long enough since Jo’d taken her last sip that her tea should have gotten cold. Instead, it was still the perfect temperature. She gave thanks to the small comforts magic could give.

  “Japan was losing—or you thought Japan would lose—in your timeline, so you wished for Japan to win the war. And that’s the world I was born into,” Jo clarified, thinking of the odd events leading up to the Commonwealth Powers’ victory: a series of tactical errors, miscommunications and weather phenomena that resulted in the USA’s western fleet being condensed and subsequently decimated. That was followed almost immediately by a decisive and unforeseen strike on the eastern seaboard, which resulted in enemy boots on the ground.

  It was too many unfortunate events to happen merely by chance. Takako nodded, as if reading her mind.

  “I don’t quite remember what I said to Snow anymore.” Takako paused before Snow’s name, grinding it out. “My memory of making the wish is hazy, like trying to remember a dream, but I do know that I’d been thinking about my family. My mother and father, my sister. I wanted them to be safe. At the time, winning the war seemed like the only way to ensure that, and I was willing to do anything if it meant securing their safety. My family—” Takako paused, taking a deep breath she let out on another rough sigh. “My family is everything I have, even if they no longer remember who I am.” She buried her head in her hands. “It’s not fair, none of it.”

  Instantly, with those words, Jo was brought back to the present.

  She had never related more fiercely to another’s sentiment. Her mother’s blood still flowed through Jo’s veins, even if memories of Jo no longer flowed through her head. As one-sided as those memories were now, Jo would treasure them for a literal eternity. Even Lydia, a sibling Jo never had the opportunity to know and born in a timeline where she’d never lived, now held a small place in her heart—a sense of gratitude that her mother was not spending her life without the companionship of a daughter.

  Takako held a similar, undying love for her family. And right now, though Jo did not know for sure, she would bet that they were currently in the path of Mt. Fuji’s fury. And Snow refused to let Takako even attempt to save them.

  Another flash of anger sparked in Jo’s chest at the thought, but she smothered it, forcing herself to stay calm, focusing on Takako and the turmoil she could now see swirling behind her eyes. She couldn’t save Takako’s family for her. If Jo was honest with herself, Takako’s family likely couldn’t be saved at all—everything in the world was at the whim of wishers. But at this moment, for what it was worth, she could at least offer her an end to her guilt.

  “Look, Takako,” she started, taking what she hoped looked like a casual sip of her tea. “I appreciate you telling me, your trust. But I honestly don’t care one way or another what America could’ve looked like versus what it did when I lived there. If it was one single nation, or split up as it is. . . None of it matters.”

  As expected, Takako looked startled by the admission, and Jo couldn’t bite back the smirk that tugged at her own lips in response.

  “If America had won, I’d be working for the mafia, probably some descendants of Wayne’s old friends. Take a moment and imagine how that would’ve been.” Even Takako smiled slightly at the remark. “Regardless, my life wouldn’t exactly have been different in a sovereign nation. I mean, maybe I worked with the Yakuza a bit more in the timeline you created? But hell, with the internet, I might have worked for them anyway.”

  “You don’t know that. You might have been happier.”

  Jo just shrugged. It was almost a little odd to
feel nothing for her homeland, as if it had never really been her home to begin with. “No, I don’t know anything. But I highly doubt my family would have been well off either way, and I definitely would have been doing the exact same thing no matter what reality I’d grown up in. I know no different, and who my boss is never really mattered as long as the pay was right. Home, what’s really important about it, isn’t land or walls but the people who occupy them—it’s the people who matter, and I would’ve had those same people in any reality. So you’ll find no hard feelings about your wish here.”

  Takako didn’t seem to know how to take that, so Jo added, “But if what you’re looking for is forgiveness, it’s yours.” Jo squeezed the woman’s hand lightly. “I don’t blame you, Takako. But I forgive you for whatever you think you need forgiveness for.”

  For a long, drawn-out moment, Takako looked at their hands, not quite holding, but resting comfortably against each other. Then, Takako stretched her hand out beneath the touch and linked her fingers with Jo’s, gripping tightly for a moment before simply settling into the hold. It felt like a thank you, so Jo took it as one, rubbing her thumb gently over Takako’s.

  Another, more comfortable length of silence passed before Takako spoke again.

  “Megumi, my sister,” she whispered. “I’ve been watching her grow, following her life as best I can from here. She’s almost forty now. My niece and nephew just turned twelve last month. Twins, actually.”

  As much as it pained her, Jo could tell where she was going with this, could hear the way each word had been wrought in barbed wire and caught all the way up Takako’s throat. She didn’t want to be right, but Jo knew the universe was not that kind.